Tarnished Gold
by Dragonessa Smith
Summary: Hermione reflects on becoming obsolete, and the one guy who helped her realize that she would always be needed...


Tarnished Gold  
  
  
A/N: This is largely inspired by my own personal Evan: Eric H, from Spanish. Love ya man, you made me feel needed.  
  
  
They have a whole bunch of stupid little sayings about winners. Cheaters never win, winners never cheat. A whole bunch of them. Well, they're not always true. I'm a supposed "winner" and I've cheated a lot of times.  
  
A lot of people think it was hanging around with Harry and Ron that made me loosen up, to not care about the rules as much as I had.   
  
It wasn't them.  
  
It was Evan.  
  
Evan was the only person I didn't recognize in my Arithmacy class. All the others were fifth years, like me, but I found out he was a sixth year after a while. He hadn't taken Arithmacy as a fifth year, because he had been taking some other classes.  
  
He was like no one I'd ever met before. He cheated, slept in class, lied, swore, slacked off, and sucked up to the teachers so much they never noticed all the other stuff.  
  
He completely took advantage of me several times, partnering up on projects, then shoving all the work on me two days before it's due. I don't know why, but I haven't told Sinistra about him, like I would anyone else.  
  
There was something about him, he just set me off like no one else. Maybe it was the way he openly cheated, how he didn't seem to want to learn the material, just to get the credentials. Or the way he always pretended to try and make the other guys in our group work. How he made sure his friends also didn't have to do their work by passing around mine. How he hugged me and told me he loved me whenever I did all the work on a project and let him stick his name on it.  
  
Okay, maybe his six pack and strong arms had something to do with it.  
  
So sue me, I'm a teenage girl, you think I'm not gonna notice this stuff?  
  
I would always complain to people like Myrtle and Eloise, who wouldn't tell anyone, but who had the right comments whenever I needed them, the 'What a jerk!'s and the 'He never even thanked you, did he?'s.   
  
All in all, I was looking forward to the day he had to take the final by himself, since Sinistra was sure to rearrange the seats before then.  
  
Okay, maybe I felt a little sad when Sinistra moved us, Evan started getting a friend of his to tutor him, and he didn't need me to help him anymore.  
  
Who am I kidding? I felt like I'd been dumped. By a guy I wasn't even dating. It was the equivalent of getting dumped by Neville after I turned him down for the Yule Ball.  
  
But then I realized something. Evan didn't need me, but I needed him.   
  
As we got older, and the kids in my classes started taking school more seriously, suddenly I wasn't the only person with my hand up in the air. Or if I was, it was out of habit, not stupidity that made people not raise their hands.  
  
It all came to a head when I walked into the common room and saw Ron and Harry looking at something in "Hogwarts, A History." They were actually reading it.  
  
I felt obsolete. Useless.  
  
I was so mad, I couldn't stand it. I totally blew off studying for an Arithmacy test and wandered about the library.  
  
The next day, when I got the test, I couldn't think straight. I didn't recognize a single thing on it. I must have looked so confused.  
  
Suddenly, Evan's sneezing and coughing, and his whole face is turning red.  
  
"What's the problem, Evan?" Sinistra asks. The whole class is staring at him.  
  
"I think I'm allergic to Parvati." He sniffles. "Or at least her perfume."  
  
"Do you want to go to the hospital wing?"  
  
"No, but I think I'd do better next to Hermione. She doesn't wear perfume or anything scented. I've never had any problems before."  
  
"Fine. Finch-Fletchley, switch with Smith. I hope you will be able to concentrate now."  
  
"Thank you." He gets up and comes over to me. While there's still some noise from him putting his bag down, he whispers, "I saw you in the library. You didn't study, did you?"  
  
I stared at him, totally shocked. "You did?" I whispered, slightly snotty.  
  
"Kinda." He slipped me a small piece of paper. I unfolded it under the desk.  
  
Typed, in very small letters, was every vocabulary word, every formula, everything we needed to know for the test, all on one three inch by five inch piece of paper.  
  
"Consider it payback." He murmurs, pulling out his own sheet from his pocket. "And you smell great even without that stuff."  
  
So, as far as I'm concerned, only one thing is true.  
  
Winners always cheat, losers always get caught. 


End file.
